


Rose and Thorn

by clutzycricket



Series: Pathways and Maybes [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Stitched together research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4912000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Scots boy brings a bevy of surprises with him.</p><p>Thankfully, after the year they've had, they aren't bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rose and Thorn

The Scots boy was a bit of a surprise, they had to admit, coming in with a pale horse and two letters for Treville. Tall and spare, with sharp eyes and a quick hand with his pistol (and quicker with his tongue, as D’artagnan learned to Aramis’ glee), Jon Snow was a mystery.

After the past year, the Musketeers were rather sick of mysteries. 

“French mother?” Aramis asked Snow one day. 

“No,” Snow said, a bit moodily. “Needed a change of scenery, my uncle knew Treville from… a while back.”

And that was all he was willing to say, though D’artagnan was strangely willing to befriend the boy, asking about his pistol and practicing swordsmanship with him.

“It’s in his stance,” the pup explained to Porthos one night. “I know that grief well enough from the mirror.”

Porthos made sure to work with both of the lads the next day. Snow seemed to think being prettier than Aramis would get him out of any type of scrape, and that wouldn’t do.

~

“We’re cut off,” Athos said, biting off the curse. Porthos’ shoulder was ablaze, and they were a good distance from any of their usual hiding spots.

Snow looked at the buildings, something like hope in his expression. “How many of them would you say there were?”

“No more than eight, nine?” Aramis guessed, earning a nod from Athos.

“If I got us to an archer and a someone trained as a doctor, could we hole up and pick them off until someone rounded them up?” he asked. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Aramis said, grinning at that. 

“House with the bronze sun on the garden gates, two streets up and one down,” Snow said in a low tone, so it didn’t carry. “The wolf begs the sun for sanctuary.”

Athos nodded, and D’artagnan looked ready to protest, but it was practical, in case Snow got taken out. “

The house was hidden behind a high stone wall with those walls of strong steel, just letting them see a woman with grey in her hair and strong enough to toss the pup halfway down the street looking up.

“Snow, what is…”

“Amelie, I apologize, but can you fetch my lady? Tell her we have an injured man and some armed men after us,” Snow said, looking rueful. “She’ll sigh but she’d be more upset if I didn’t come to her.”

“She’s too soft on you, lad,” Amelie shook her head, unlocking the gates. “Hurry, then. I can work a pistol as well as anything, and I’ll let my girl know, too.” At their looks, she gave them a crooked grin. “I was a soldier’s woman for thirty years, lads, and gave him two babes on campaign. Takes more than some city bandits to frighten me, not when the lady took in my daughter and I and gave us this house and good wages after my man died on me. I’ll take the wounded lad to the kitchen, and Snow can find the lady.”

Aramis was bouncing on his heels, D’artagnan studying the house, which was carefully done in an odd mix of styles, French and something that was probably Scottish and something he wasn’t quite sure of. The kitchen, it turned out, was a warm and well lit spot where they could all fit cozily enough as Amelie lit the fire to boil two small pots. 

“The lady insists on some spirits, too. Says it the best way to keep a wound from turning, learned it from her mad uncle,” she said thoughtfully. “It hasn’t failed yet.”

“That’s comforting,” Porthos said, watching as Aramis looked interestedly at the pots.

“It is, rather,” said a light female voice. “Sirs, I fear that your company is not far behind, and my neighbors are occasionally prone to gossip. You may want to take position- Jon will explain where Marie and Ygritte are, and you can work from there.”

The lady of the house was lovely, with saucer-like eyes and black hair braided past her knees, a silver-filgereed pistol on her hip and a wicked looking knife on the other, over dress that seemed made of loose layers that covered her to her chin.

“You’ll need help with him,” Aramis said, a slightly stubborn set to his jaw. “He’s twice your size and the bullet’s in deep.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Of course. You must be Aramis- Jon’s told me a bit about you all.”

“He’s not mentioned you at all,” the pup said quietly.

“I asked him not to,” the woman said softly, hand flexing towards the knife. “But let’s focus on the immediate problems first, eh?”

She didn’t mind Aramis being proprietary over Porthos’ well-being- she merely explained patiently in well-taught French exactly what she was doing, and reminded him that her hands were much smaller and more delicate than his own, and he would be better off holding him down.

Of course, this somehow ended up with her leaning practically across his chest, Aramis smirking, and Porthos having just enough bloodloss to make a joke. “Sorry ‘bout this. Normally if a woman’s on top of me she’s enjoying herself more.”

The odd little lady blushed terribly at that, but didn’t jump away. “Yes, well, I always had a fondness for a good bit of anatomy.”

Aramis was beaming by the time the others came in, looking triumphant aside from the graze on Snow’s arm.

“Why is my sister blushing?” the newest recruit asked.

“Sister?” Porthos looked between them, seeing the same long hands, mobile mouth, even the heavy eyelashes. 

Huh.

~

It turns out that there is a Duchy. Dukedom. The exact word doesn’t matter, because it is an odd near magical island off the coast of Scotland, near some near magical maelstrom, and Rhaenys spent the first year and a half of her life in Istanbul and is translating the whole sorry tale into French. There had been a Duke who had been slightly mad, who had sent his son to the still shaky diplomatic posting in the Ottoman Empire.

And, much to the surprise and annoyance of all, the heir to the dukedom, who was considered the flower of the nobility, had married the daughter of a local ruler, having two children. Eventually, they had come home, and things had been tense.

There had been a girl desperate to get out of a bad marriage, and a series of fights, and the young man had proven weak. A bastard son was born.

The Ottoman lady had died when her daughter was sixteen, and her husband, now the Duke, had remarried three years later, to the widow of his cousin and an old friend of the family. She pled to him for protection for her three children, now fatherless, who were, after all, his kin.

(”Bloody Lannisters”, Snow had grumbled, and Rhaenys had kicked his shin.)

The widow had seemed gloating but content to revel in her position as Duchess, and if she was not kind to Rhaenys, the girl expected to wed soon enough and leave the island. 

Except then the woman turned… vengeful, towards Rhaenys in particular. Plans for her to meet other families were sabotaged, gowns were ruined, other bits of mischief that she couldn’t blame on her stepmother without sounding like a spiteful child.

And the Duke grew ill. Rhaenys looked nervously towards the calendar, needing her brother to be twenty-one so they could send the Lannisters packing. 

The Duke died a scant month before his heir was of age, and she prepared herself for battle.

The Lannister woman smiled a venomous smile and proclaimed that the marriage of the late Duke and Duchess could not be valid, for she was a heathen. As such, the title should go to the next heir- her eldest son.

Jon and Rhaenys’ brother smiled and pointed out that the marriage had been performed and witnessed and judged valid long ago, and the marriage certificate had been left in a safe place. 

So she had gone after the walking ghost of the late Duchess, in her blind rage and jealousy.

For there was strange things that walked this earth, and they could answer to the most harmless-seeming of peddlers. One such had waited for the Duke’s sister- and, by a quirk of law, his heir- and gone after her.

“She could not have obliterated the woman who stole the husband she thought her due, so she would instead destroy the girl who everyone said looked so much like her,” Rhaenys said quietly. “Jon and Ygritte found us before I bleed out, and I had my knife.”

The Musketeers, who had been listening to the story curiously, noticed her fiddling with the edges of her odd top.

“Scarring?” Aramis asked. “Very dashing. I have ladies who absolutely purr over them.”

“Or it proves you are too slow to duck,” she shot back, sharing a grin with Porthos. “Cersei… paid for her attempt. Perhaps too harshly- Jon,  _don’t_.” She dug her nails in her palms. “No one deserved that.”

Snow did look mulish at that, and he wondered if he wanted to know what the punishment was. He’d run up against… unusual things once or twice.

“I was more a curiosity than a proper bride as it was,” she said, with a slight trace of bitterness. “My brother’s title was about all that salvaged me, really, and someone made sure that everything got out. I was quite thoroughly ruined by everything that happened, and Cersei’s relatives are still very unhappy with me. So Jon remembered his Uncle Ned’s tales, and I always wanted to see Paris…”

“Jon’s your half-brother,” D’artagnan confirmed, tilting his head.

“Raised at Dragonstone with us, yes,” she smiled. “He always played my knight, so following me never was a question.” She looked at the doorway. “And I think I’d have to have chained Ygritte to keep her away.”

A wiry woman with a  _recurve bow_ in her hands and a riot of red hair peered in. “I can pick a lock, Lady Crow.”

“Bratling,” Rhaenys shook her head. “Amelie and Marie are fine?”

“Aye, they want to know what to prepare for dinner,” Ygritte- it had to be- asked.

“Carrion stew?” the lady murmured, earning a snort. “Must you be off, or shall you stay for dinner?”

“Can the invitation be for a later date?” Aramis asked, looking pointedly at Porthos.

“Of course,” Rhaenys said, blushing faintly.

Athos looked up at the ceiling, and Porthos wondered if he actually prayed for patience.

~

Ygritte was a gift from God, whatever language you used to name him, Rhaenys had decided that long ago.

The younger girl had been a gameskeeper’s only child, bright and fierce and she loved Jon entirely. Father would never have approved if he’d known, but Aegon never gave a damn as long as Jon was happy, and Rhaenys was cold-blooded enough to know that it weakened any chance of Jon’s descendants claiming Dragonstone. 

Besides, Jon was a good shot, but Ygritte was better, and it was an arrow with her fletching that pierced the creature that Qyburn had sent after her. 

(She didn’t truly believe that Cersei knew the depths of Qyburn’s depravity. That he was cruel, a killer, yes. That he dabbled in the uncanny? Of a certainty. That was near fashionable in some circles. But how he did it… Cersei was a mother first and foremost. She couldn’t… could she?)

So Ygritte had come to Paris as her full-time bodyguard- not as a lady’s maid, because the idea of Ygritte as a maid was patently hilarious. (She did like the silks and flounces, though overall she also liked being able to move. They were working on it, between Ygritte’s desire for movement and Rhaenys discomfort with showcasing the thick scarring over her shoulders and down her chest- some of the clothing she made, based on Mother’s old things, worked a treat, and she combined it with French and Scots style embroidery.)

Ygritte had also helped her pick the house, because she wanted a place on the roof where she could shoot her bow from, with tiles perfect for shooting a musket or pistol from without the recoil sending her sliding.  

It was one of the reasons she had agreed to Ygritte coming along. Jon was sweet, he loved her dearly and was her sworn knight from childhood games. And when she died, he had sworn to make sure that she did not rise again, from the scars that crossed her shoulders from shattered teeth.

But Ygritte, she knew, would be the one with the knife if Jon faltered, the one to burn her body to ashes and teach someone else to do the same.

Which is why she knew well enough, the day after Jon had brought the Musketeers to her home, that Ygritte would say something that would shock a woman not raised in Dragonstone or one of Papa’s diplomatic postings. (Which, as a matter of fact, had involved rather a lot of Mother smoothing things over.)

“So, are you going to bed the Musketeer?” Ygritte asked, timing it as Rhaenys took a sip of her drink. Which resulted in disappointment, because she didn’t stumble over that at all.

“Which one- we did play host to five, though you are sleeping with my brother,” Rhaenys said, arching an eyebrow. Her shoulders itched, and the slight amount of uncanny she’d used to clean and help along Porthos’ wound the previous afternoon had left her vaguely irritable when combined with that.

There was something worrying about that.

“The big one who laughed at your jokes,” Ygritte snorted. “Or the one as pretty as Jon.” She grinned wickedly, leaning sideways closer to her. “Or both- I know how big that monstrosity you call a bed is, you could fit them.” 

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Rhaenys muttered.

“Well, I don’t think you could fit him too…” Ygritte laughed. 

“I hate you,” Rhaenys said firmly.

~

Jon did look terribly adorable when he was confused- there was a reason they called it “as pretty as a Targaryen”. 

“Porthos and Aramis had some of Marie’s pastries,” he said, scratching his head. “Have they been visiting?”

“Aye, your sister needs friends, and occasionally a pair of big strong men,” Ygritte said, not meanly, but still amused as anything. “Aramis is curious about what she knows about medicine, and Porthos and she talk a bit.”

Jon tilted his head before shrugging. “They’re good men, and I’m glad. Though she can ask me for help if she needs it.”

“Aye, but she needed the both of them to help move that bed of hers,” Ygritte cracked, wondering if she could make him blush before the Lady Crow came swooping in.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't kidding about stitching together various bits of research! I knew that Elizabeth I had diplomatic ties to the Ottomans, so having Rhaegar be sent in the days of James I didn't seem impossible, especially given PRETTY BISHIE RHAEGAR and his reality bending powers. *snort* 
> 
> Rhaenys' clothing is loosely based on what I could find on an Ottoman lady's garments of the time, mixed with practicality and what she can get her hands on- having seen the clothing of Musketeers verse, and envisioning her scarring as being a lot more extensive than Milady's, she uses it because she can pretend it is "fashionable" and not showcase being used, basically, as a chewtoy. 
> 
> Scottish inheritance seemed to fit enough to justify hiding Dragonstone there, as an island in the Inner Hebrides, near Gulf of Corryvreckan. There were a few other reasons, but I was running on fumes and that last line of Ygrittes. 
> 
> I had to make a stab at the age of majority, but if I was off, send me a tip?


End file.
